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Freedom regardless of politics

IN an appendix to Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell described how a concept could be made literally unthinkable if the language used to describe it was distorted. The example he gave was the word "free". In Newspeak, free could be used only as in "this field is free from weeds", "this dog is free from lice". The concept of political freedom disappeared, because the words no longer existed to express it.

It was an uncanny example to have chosen. Think of how often contemporary politicians use the word "freedom" in precisely the opposite of its original sense. Where freedom used to mean a guarantee against coercion - freedom of speech, freedom of assembly - it is now increasingly used to mean an entitlement: "freedom to work", "freedom to use the NHS" and so on.

This newspaper's starting point is a presumption in favour of personal liberty. The onus should always be on those who wish to tell us what to do to prove their case. It is not enough to tell us what to eat on the ground that we might be poisoning ourselves, or to prevent us from publishing something on the ground that others might be offended, or to lock us up on the suspicion that we might be dangerous (although not insane).

Consider, for example, the question of protecting children. All of us want to keep children from harm. But look at what an edifice of illiberal legislation has been constructed on that worthy sentiment: advertising bans, Draconian powers for social workers, the monitoring of e-mails in the name of breaking paedophile rings, the restriction of adoption rights for would-be parents who are the wrong colour.

Different liberties are threatened by different kinds of people. Those on the political Right tend to be less liberal about social and legal freedoms: the freedom to smoke cannabis or download pornography; the freedom to go where you please without carrying identification; to remain silent in court; to sympathise with terrorists. This is partly because conservatives rarely exercise any of these freedoms, and cannot understand why anyone else would want to.

The same applies, mutatis mutandis, to those on the Left, who find it difficult to imagine wanting to hunt foxes or shoot pistols. Left-of-Centre governments are perhaps at their most illiberal when it comes to free contract and ownership: the freedom to employ whom you please, regardless of sex or race - and, conversely, the freedom to work for whom you will, without the imposition of compulsory parental leave; the freedom to do what you wish to your own property, including banning trespassers, evicting squatters and building extensions to your house; the freedom to buy and sell, even when ministers judge the commodity dangerous (tobacco, for example) or unethical (ivory).

What is particularly worrying about the present Government is that it seems to combine the social authoritarianism of the Right with the class-based illiberalism of the Left. It wants the seizure of assets from unconvicted but suspected criminals, greater powers of surveillance and a reduction in jury trials. And, at the same time, businesses are choked by rules on health and hygiene and "anti-discrimination". And not only businesses: schools, universities and the professions are all ordered around as the state imposes its own nostrums on what ought to be private institutions.

Liberty depends on our being prepared to campaign for freedoms that we would never dream of exercising ourselves. It presents a challenge to everyone, regardless of political allegiance.

-- Anonymous, July 17, 2001

Answers

Didn't Janice Joplin have a definition for Freedom that was offered up to those who didn't have the inclination to intellectualize?

-- Anonymous, July 17, 2001

Um, there was a time when I didn't have that inclination ;) (Me an' Bobby McGee, that is.)

-- Anonymous, July 17, 2001

I pick a card each day to post at midnight ib the "tea room"

today I picked..Freedom:

"The Angels guide you to freely express your true thoughts and feelings with love.

You may be feeling trapped right now by life's conditions. The angels ask that you realize that you are the only jail keeper that ever surfaces in your life. Whenever YOU realize you have the power to be free, freedom follows. Everything you do in life is by choice..and you are always free to chose again!"

Says alot, hey?

-- Anonymous, July 17, 2001